CLIMATEGATE: Ten Years Later

Climategate: Ten years later 

CAPE TOWN - Kelvin Kemm is a nuclear physicist and the 

Chief Executive Officer of nuclear project management company, Nuclear Africa.

Climate alarmists are still promoting junk science, fossil fuel bans and wealth redistribution

by Dr. Kelvin Kemm 

This month marks the tenth anniversary of “Climategate” – the release of thousands of emails to and from climate scientists who had been (and still are) collaborating and colluding to create a manmade climate crisis that exists in their minds and computer models, but not in the real world. The scandal should have ended climate catastrophism. Instead, it was studiously buried by politicians, scientists, activists and crony capitalists, who will rake in trillions of dollars from the exaggerations and fakery, while exempting themselves from the damage they are inflicting on everyday families. Few people know the Inconvenient Facts about the supposed manmade climate and extreme weather “crisis.” For example, since 1998, average global temperatures have risen by a mere few hundredths of a degree. (For a time, they even declined slightly.) Yet all we hear is baseless rhetoric about manmade carbon dioxide causing global warming and climate changes that pose existential threats to humanity, wildlife and planet. Based on this, we are told we must stop using fossil fuels to power economic growth and better living standards. This is bad news for Africa and the world.

We keep hearing that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels cause rising global temperatures. But satellite data show no such thing. In fact, computer model predictions for 2019 are almost a half degree Celsius (0.9 degrees F) above actual satellite measurements. Even worse, anytime a scientist raises questions about the alleged crisis, he or she is denounced as a “climate change denier.”

A major source of data supporting the human CO2- induced warming proposition came from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

Then on the morning of 17 November 2009 a Pandora’s box of embarrassing CRU information exploded onto the world scene. A computer hacker penetrated the university’s computer system and took 61 Megs of material that showed the CRU had been manipulating scientific information to make global warming appear to be the fault of mankind and industrial CO2. Among many other scandals, the shocking leaked emails showed then-CRU-director Prof. Phil Jones boasting of using statistical “tricks” to remove evidence of observed declines in global temperatures.

In another email, he advocated deleting data rather than providing it to scientists who did not share his view and might criticize his analyses. Non-alarmist scientists had to invoke British freedom of information laws to get the information. Jones was later suspended, and former British Chancellor Lord Lawson called for a Government enquiry into the embarrassing exposé.

The affair became known as “Climategate,” and a group of American University students even posted a YouTube song, “Hide the Decline,” mocking the CRU and climate modeler Dr. Michael Mann, whose use of the phrase “hide the decline” in temperatures had been found in the hacked emails.

So what is the truth? If one considers the composition of the atmosphere and equates it to the height of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the extra plant-fertilizing CO2 added to the atmosphere since California became the 31st state of the United States in 1850 is less than the thickness of tiles under the Tower.

Can this tiny increase really explain any observed global warming since the Little Ice Age ended, and the modern industrial era began? Since California became a state, the measured global rise in atmospheric temperature has been less than 10C. But most of this increase occurred prior to 1940, and average planetary temperatures fell from around 1943 until about 1978, leading to a global cooling scare. Temperatures rose slightly until 1998, then mostly remained stable, even as carbon dioxide levels continued to rise. Rising CO2 levels and temperature variations do not correlate very well at all.

Moreover, during the well-documented Medieval Warm Period from about 950 to 1350, warmer global temperatures allowed Viking farmers to raise crops and tend cattle in Greenland. The equally well documented 500-year Little Ice Age starved and froze the Vikings out of Greenland, before reaching its coldest point, the Maunder Minimum, 1645-1715. That’s when England’s River Thames regularly froze over, Norwegian farmers demanded compensation for lands buried by advancing glaciers, and priests performed exorcism rituals to keep alpine glaciers away from villages. Paintings from the era show crowds of people ice skating and driving horse-drawn carriages on the Thames.

Industry and automobile emissions obviously played no role in either the MWP or the LIA.

These dramatic events should ring warning bells for any competent, honest scientist. If the Medieval Warm Period occurred without industrial CO2 driving it, why should industrial CO2 be causing any observed warming today? Europe’s great plague wiped out nearly a quarter of its population during the Little Ice Age. The warm period brought prosperity and record crops, while cold years brought misery, famine and death.

Ten years before Climategate, Dr. Mann released a computer-generated graph purporting to show global temperatures over the previous 1500 years. His graph mysteriously made the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and Maunder extreme cold years disappear – and planetary temperatures spike suddenly the last couple decades of twentieth century. The graph had the shape of a hockey stick, was published worldwide and became a centerpiece for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Many scientists were highly suspicious of the hockey stick claims. Two of them, Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, completely discredited Mann’s computer program and revisionist history. Of course, that did not stop former US vice president Al Gore from using the discredited graph in his doom and gloom climate change movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

The hacked CRU emails also showed exchanges between Mann and Jones, in which they discussed how to intimidate editors who wanted to publish scientific views contrary to theirs, to suppress any contradictory studies. In one email, Jones expressed his desire to get rid of the “troublesome editor” of the Climate Research journal for daring to publish differing views. The editor got sacked.

When University of Colorado climate skeptic Professor Roger Pielke, Jr. asked the CRU for its original temperature readings, he was told the data had been (conveniently) lost. Lost!?! Do professionals lose something as valuable as original data? Many suspected they just didn’t want anyone to expose their clever manipulations and fabrications.

But if industrial carbon dioxide did not cause recent global warming, what did? A Danish research group, led by Prof. Henrik Svensmark, has found a very credible match between levels of sunspot activity (giant magnetic storms) on our Sun and global temperatures over the last fifteen hundred years. This all-natural mechanism actually fits the evidence! How terribly inconvenient for alarmists.

Cosmic rays from deep space constantly impinge on the Earth’s upper atmosphere and produce clouds, much like high-flying jets leave white contrails behind their engines. More clouds can trap heat, but they also cause global cooling because not as much sunlight strikes the Earth. More sunspots mean a stronger magnetic shield, therefore fewer cosmic rays reaching Earth, thus less cloud cover and more global warming. The Sun is currently in a near-record period of low sunspot activity.

All sorts of interest groups are suppressing this information. Maybe worse, when Climategate broke, “climate justice” campaigner for Friends of the Earth Emma Brindal said bluntly: “A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources.” Not protecting Earth from manmade CO2 emissions or natural and manmade climate change – but redistributing wealth and resources, according to formulas that self-appointed ruling elites decide is “socially just.”

Climate campaigners also oppose “excessive” air travel for business or pleasure, 4x4 vehicles as “unnecessary luxuries,” and modern homes for Africans. Some even say Africans must continue living in mud huts and avoid the use of electricity and modern farming technologies. Minor US actor Ed Begley has said “Africans should have solar power where they need it most: on their huts.” They, Al Gore, Phil Jones and Mike Mann are exempted from these restrictions, of course.

Real social justice and human rights mean everyone has access to abundant, reliable, affordable energy, especially universally important electricity. Not from expensive, intermittent, weather-dependent wind turbines and solar panels. From fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric power plants.

We in the developing world will no longer let climate truth be suppressed. We will not allow loud, radical activists to put the brakes on African economic development, jobs, and improved health and living standards, in the name of advancing their anti-human, wealth redistribution agendas.

Dr. Kelvin Kemm is a nuclear physicist and CEO of Nuclear Africa (Pty) Ltd, a project management company based in Pretoria, South Africa. He does consultancy work in strategic development.

BEFORE YOU SELL YOUR WATER SHARES!

WATER! Do you want to gain or lose when you sell your Water Shares? 

Before you sell your Water Shares, here’s what you need to do!

1) Secure copies of your original yearly quantity (*Allotment Quantity) *Water, and original date of *Adjudication.

2) Determine which you want to sell: Allotment Quantity or *Consumptive Use.

3) *If you sell your Consumptive Use, you retain the right to use the margin between your Consumptive Use and Allotment Quantity.

4) In drought, change of crop etc., Owner has the right to use up to (*Supplement), not exceed, their Allotment Quantity.

5) If you sell your Consumptive Use, make sure buyer does not include verbiage such as; Dry-Up Covenant. Instead, include verbiage such as; I retain the right to use _ _ _ acre feet.

6) Should you sell your Allotment Quantity, buyer may include verbiage such as Dry-Up Covenant; you lose rights to use that Water – unless you agree to an annual lease back.

7) Should you sell your Allotment Quantity and agree to a lease back, make certain buyer assumes responsibility for ALL Ditch Company assessments thereon.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Owners of Original Water Shares are likely taking significant losses when they sell their shares!

Why? They don’t know their rights. They generally sell their Consumptive Use amount, which is evaluated by the buyer.

Selling the CU amount is OK, if seller retains their right to use the margin.

The margin between AQ and CU can be as much as 50% more than the CU.

Or, in dollars let’s say your CU might be worth $120,000 per share and your AQ $240.000 per share. Do you want to gain - or lose - if you sell your water?  

_____________________________________________________________

· Water: Our forefathers put "Water" (ground and surface because they’re connected) to beneficial use.

· Allotment Quantity (AQ). Water was recorded as an Allotment Quantity. They could not predict Consumptive Use.

· Consumptive Use (CU): Amount you use on certain crop. There’s no such thing as “historic” Consumptive Use, for many reasons including crop rotations.

· Adjudication: When our forefathers put "Water" to beneficial use, they were given a "Date of Adjudication." That "original date of adjudication" stays; regardless a later well date.

· Supplement: Upon selling a Water Share, owner may sell their AQ or CU. If owner sells their CU, they have the right to use the margin between. Owner may supplement that demand with well (or other) water. (c) The use of groundwater may be considered as an alternate or *supplemental source of supply for surface decrees entered prior to June 7, 1969, taking into consideration both previous usage and the necessity to protect the vested rights of others. C.R.S. 37-92-102 Legislative declaration basic tenets of Colorado Water Law. 

NOW THEY'RE COMING AFTER THE ROAST BEEF OF OLD ENGLAND!

Now They’re coming after the Roast Beef of Old England

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

At Harvard, there was once a University. Now that once noble campus has become a luxury asylum for the terminally feeble-minded. Walter Willett, one of the inmates (in his sadly incurable delusion he calls himself “Professor of Nutrition”), has gibbered to a well-meaning visitor from Business Insider that “eating a diet that’s especially high in red meat will be undermining the sustainability of the climate.”

Farewell, then, to the Roast Beef of Old England. So keen are we in the Old Country on our Sunday roast (cooked rare and sliced thickish) that the French call us les rosbifs. But the “Professor” (for we must humor him by letting him think he is qualified to talk about nutrition) wants to put a stop to all that.

As strikingly ignorant of all but the IPCC Party Line as others in that hopeless hospice for hapless halfwits, he overlooks the fact that the great plains of what is now the United States of America were once teeming with millions upon millions of eructating, halating ruminants. Notwithstanding agriculture, there are far fewer ruminants now than there were then.

The “Professor” drools on: “It's bad for the person eating it, but also really bad for our children and our grandchildren, so that's something I think we should totally, strongly advise against. It's — in fact — irresponsible.”

It may be that the “Professor” – look how fetchingly he adjusts his tinfoil hat to a rakish angle – does not accept the theory of evolution. If, however, that theory is correct, the Earth is

somewhat older than the 6000 years derived by the amiably barmy Bishop Ussher counting the generations since Abraham.

Agriculture as we now understand it only became widespread in the past 10,000 years. Before that, for perhaps two million years, our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate meat and fish and not a lot else – perhaps a little fruit and a few nuts now and then, but only in season.

If eating all that saturated fat was bad for them, how on Earth were they fertile enough to breed generation after generation across the rolling millennia, leading eventually to us?

Let me give the “Professor” a brief lecture in nutrition, about which he plainly knows little. The energy in our food comes entirely from three macronutrients: fats, proteins, and carbohydrates.

There is about 15-25% protein in just about everything we eat. So the question simplifies to this: what balance should we strike between fats, which come chiefly from meat and dairy products, and carbohydrates, which are bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, grains, seeds and sugars?

To answer that question, a short and painful history lesson will perhaps be helpful.

In the early 1950s Ancel Keys, a pop physiologist, announced that he had conducted a “five-country study” (later a “seven-country study”) which, he asserted, showed a link between the saturated fat from meat-eating and cardiovascular disease.

In fact it was a 22-country study, from which Keys had excluded 15 countries that did not show the result he wanted. Worse, he had failed to exclude an important confounder: namely, the latitude. The higher the latitude, the greater the prevalence of cardiovascular disease, chiefly due to Vitamin D deficiency caused by too little sunshine on the skin.

However, Keys went on to feature on the front cover of Time magazine, and he attracted an enormous grant to test his tinfoil theory on patients in six mental institutions and an old people’s home in Minnesota.

Ethically, the study was questionable: once the patients had consented, they were told what they could and could not eat, and were closely supervised to make sure they complied. They were divided into two cohorts: one on a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet and one on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet.

The results were decisive: there was no additional incidence of cardiovascular disease among those on the high-fat diet. Keys arranged for publication to be deferred for more than a decade.

In 1977 the “Democrats” decided to issue guidelines to the people on what they should and should not eat. The National Institutes of Health invited nutritional stakeholders to a closed-doors meeting that lasted two days. Those present were told they would not be allowed to leave the room until they had put their signatures to a pre-drafted “consensus statement” recommending a carbohydrate-rich diet. One by one, they all caved in and signed it.

Now, where have we heard that word “consensus” before?

Only after the guidelines had been safely published did the Minnesota study come to light. But by then, of course, it was too late.

At that time, metabolic syndrome, obesity, diabetes and its numerous complications, dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease were all rare. Less than 2% of the population were diabetic.

However, within two years of the promulgation of the guidelines at the instigation of a Senate Committee under George McGovern, the incidence of all these diseases began to rise. Now, as a direct result of those genocidal guidelines, two health dollars in three in the United States are squandered on diabetes and its dreadful sequelae.

Nor can it be said that the greater incidence and prevalence of diabetes is chiefly attributable to failure on the people’s part to adhere to the guidelines. To a significant extent, the guidelines are being followed, and it is becoming daily clearer that it is the recommendation that carbohydrates should be the staple in our diet that is causing the diabetes crisis.

By 1984 – an appropriate year – the crazed, tinfoil-hat-sporting nutrition brigade were railing against cholesterol, which made it on to the front cover of Time.

In 1994, the British Government of John Major (who had the reverse Midas touch) decided to copy the U.S. dietary guidelines. At that time, diabetes and obesity in Britain were rare. Within two years of the introduction of the guidelines, just as in the U.S.A., the evidence of compliance with the guidelines began to mount, as did the incidence of diabetes and related diseases.

Now, some 10% of the National Health Service budget is squandered on diabetes and its complications and the prognosis is no less dreadful than in the U.S.A.

Though nutrition “science” is as dominated by hard-Left extremists as climate “science”, courageous skeptics have begun to come forward. In Australia, a doctor who had recommended to diabetic patients that they should cut down on the carbohydrates and increase the fats was subjected to a two-year disciplinary process by the medical authorities, at the end of which they were compelled to admit defeat because he was curing his patients.

In Sweden, the medical authorities waged a similar campaign against a doctor for the crime of curing her patients of diabetes by telling them to eat fewer carbohydrates and more meat. She stood bravely firm and the authorities were compelled not only to issue a complete and abject apology but also to change the Swedish dietary guidelines.

Within two years, consumption of butter, which had been falling for two decades in accordance with the guidelines against saturated fats, had recovered to pre-guidelines levels, and the incidence of new diabetes cases began to fall.

Today, hardly a month goes by without a new double-blind trial, epidemiological study or meta-analysis in the medico-scientific journals demonstrating beyond doubt that diabetes and a range of other diseases are directly and principally attributable to the misguided guidelines recommending that carbohydrates should be the staple diet.

How do I know all this? Because 18 months ago I went to St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London to be told by a solemn-faced endocrinologist that I had diabetes. I had already suspected that, because I had noticed the distinctive odor sanctitatis on my skin. I had done some reading on it. So I told the specialist that I’d deal with it.

He said: “You are not taking me seriously. You must realize that you have full-blown diabetes. This is a serious condition. You will have to be medicated.”

I refused all medication. By then I had read enough to know that it was the government guidelines that had given me diabetes and that ignoring them would cure it.

Sure enough, after six months I went back to the endocrinologist, who looked at the test results and said that, though I was pre-diabetic, he would no longer diagnose diabetes.

Earlier this year, I went back again, this time at the hospital’s request, to undergo a day of tests not so much for my benefit as for theirs. The test showed that I was no longer even pre-diabetic. My blood sugar was normal. My blood pressure was that of an 18-year-old.

They were amazed that I had eradicated all symptoms of what they had until then imagined was an incurable, chronic, progressive and eventually fatal disease by nothing more complicated than cutting out carbohydrates almost completely, and eating rump steak three times a week, as well as lashings of bacon, full-fat cheese and heavy cream.

Oh, and fat doesn’t make you fat. I’ve lost 45 pounds – and I haven’t even dieted. Not a single calorie have I counted.

So when some pointy-head in a tinfoil hat from the Harvard Asylum for the Criminally Socialist says we should not eat meat, I beg to differ. However well-meaning the “Professor” is, and however naively perfervid is his belief in the New Religion of global warming, the advice to replace fats with carbohydrates is killing millions worldwide every year. Yet again, “settled science” – Socialist science – is wrong, and yet again genocidally so.

BEFORE YOU SELL YOUR WATER SHARES...

 WATER! Do You Want to Gain - or Lose - If You Sell Yours?

Before you sell your Water Shares, here’s what you need to do!

1) Secure copies of your original yearly quantity (*Allotment Quantity) *Water, and original date of *Adjudication.

2) Determine which you want to sell: Allotment Quantity or *Consumptive Use.

3) *If you sell your Consumptive Use, you retain the right to use the margin between your Consumptive Use and Allotment Quantity.

4) In drought, change of crop etc., Owner has the right to use up to (*Supplement), not exceed, their Allotment Quantity.
5) If you sell your Consumptive Use, make sure buyer does not include verbiage such as; Dry-Up Covenant. Instead, include verbiage such as; I retain the right to use _ _ _ acre feet.
6) Should you sell your Allotment Quantity, buyer may include verbiage such as Dry-Up Covenant; you lose rights to use that Water – unless you agree to an annual lease back.
7) Should you sell your Allotment Quantity and agree to a lease back, make certain buyer assumes responsibility for ALL Ditch Company assessments thereon.

Water: Our forefathers put "Water" (ground and surface because they’re connected) to beneficial use.

· Allotment Quantity (AQ). Water was recorded as an Allotment Quantity. They could not predict Consumptive Use.

· Consumptive Use (CU): Amount you use on certain crop. There’s no such thing as “historic” Consumptive Use, for many reasons including crop rotations.

· Adjudication: When our forefathers put "Water" to beneficial use, they were given a "Date of Adjudication." That "original date of adjudication" stays; regardless a later well date.

· Supplement: Upon selling a Water Share, owner may sell their AQ or CU. If owner sells their CU, they have the right to use the margin between. Owner may supplement that demand with well (or other) water. (c) The use of groundwater may be considered as an alternate or *supplemental source of supply for surface decrees entered prior to June 7, 1969, taking into consideration both previous usage and the necessity to protect the vested rights of others. C.R.S. 37-92-102 Legislative declaration basic tenets of Colorado Water Law. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Owners of Original Water Shares are likely taking significant losses when they sell their shares.

Why? They don’t know their rights. They generally sell their Consumptive Use amount, which is evaluated by the buyer.

Selling the CU amount is OK, if seller retains their right to use the margin.

The margin between AQ and CU can be as much as 50% more than the CU.

Or, in dollars let’s say your CU might be worth $120,000 per share and your AQ $240.000 per share. Do you want to gain - or lose - if you sell your water? 

FILLING A RESERVOIR WITH STOLEN WATER

Filling a Reservoir With Stolen Water


What no reporter will tell you: 1) Implementation of the 2007 WAS case failed to honor Judge Roger Klein's decision by including, not exempting all "valid, pre-existing, Senior" Water Rights. 2) Instead, "valid, pre-existing, Senior" Water Rights were shut down. Shut down developed an instream flow in the S. Platte River which insured water delivery past the river's historic flow that seasonally diminished around Ft. Morgan. "Excess" water rarely, if at all, flowed across the CO/NE border. 3) Shut down of "valid, pre-existing, Senior" Water overhydrated the upper end of the S. Platte, and created an underground reservoir that's considered to be multiple the size of McConaughy Lake. 4) Overhydration has increased the humidity. 5) Overhydration has raised the water table from its historic approx.. 20 feet to 2 feet and surfacing, and is destroying production acreage and homes.
6) Governor Bill Owens signed the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program "agreement" in 2007. PRRIP now serves as the "carriage vessel" that moves the water stolen from "valid, pre-existing, Senior" Water Rights Owners out to the eastern part of Colorado where they divert and sell what they now claim as "free" water.
Think about it folks. If Judge Klein's decision was implemented correctly, and Governor Owens had not agreed to the PRRIP, there'd be negligible water for the 70 Ranch Reservoir.
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/08/17/70-ranch-reservoir-bob-lembke/?fbclid=IwAR2tySTBvgLcHaayLkK2VzA2eGZb4yWBor7inoG-FkYO2eC1F9laEarhhOc
_________________________________________________________
WATER! Do You Want to Gain - or Lose - If You Sell Yours?

Before you sell your Water Shares, here’s what you need to do!

1) Secure copies of your original yearly quantity (*Allotment Quantity) *Water, and original date of *Adjudication.

2) Determine which you want to sell: Allotment Quantity or *Consumptive Use.

3) *If you sell your Consumptive Use, you retain the right to use the margin between your Consumptive Use and Allotment Quantity.

4) In drought, change of crop etc., Owner has the right to use up to (*Supplement), not exceed, their Allotment Quantity.

5) If you sell your Consumptive Use, make sure buyer does not include verbiage such as; Dry-Up Covenant. Instead, include verbiage such as; I retain the right to use _ _ _ acre feet.

6) Should you sell your Allotment Quantity, buyer may include verbiage such as Dry-Up Covenant; you lose rights to use that Water – unless you agree to an annual lease back.

7) Should you sell your Allotment Quantity and agree to a lease back, make certain buyer assumes responsibility for ALL Ditch Company assessments thereon.

_______________________________________________________________

· Water: Our forefathers put "Water" (ground and surface because they’re connected) to beneficial use.

· Allotment Quantity (AQ). Water was recorded as an Allotment Quantity. They could not predict Consumptive Use.

· Consumptive Use (CU): Amount you use on certain crop. There’s no such thing as “historic” Consumptive Use, for many reasons including crop rotations.

· Adjudication: When our forefathers put "Water" to beneficial use, they were given a "Date of Adjudication." That "original date of adjudication" stays; regardless a later well date.

· Supplement: Upon selling a Water Share, owner may sell their AQ or CU. If owner sells their CU, they have the right to use the margin between. Owner may supplement that demand with well (or other) water. (c) The use of groundwater may be considered as an alternate or *supplemental source of supply for surface decrees entered prior to June 7, 1969, taking into consideration both previous usage and the necessity to protect the vested rights of others. C.R.S. 37-92-102 Legislative declaration basic tenets of Colorado Water Law. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Owners of Original Water Shares are likely taking significant losses when they sell their shares

Why? They don’t know their rights. They generally sell their Consumptive Use amount, which is evaluated by the buyer.

Selling the CU amount is OK, if seller retains their right to use the margin.

The margin between AQ and CU can be as much as 50% more than the CU.

Or, in dollars let’s say your CU might be worth $120,000 per share and your AQ $240.000 per share. Do you want to gain - or lose - if you sell your water?
https://landandwaterusa.blogspot.com/2019/08/water-do-you-want-to-gain-or-lose-if.html?fbclid=IwAR1ymz9i0bB7iqZdppF6ZyOyKLFVOcgfwC5zxBgg99ZBzvsWODGRRngNKhc

CONFIDENTIAL

WHY DC FEARS ASSANGE

Shouldn't we, as American citizens be insisting our government cease and desist from engaging in activity(ies) that for anyone else would be considered un-Constitutional?

By Michael McCune

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was arrested last week in England after the Ecuador embassy there ended his seven-year sanctuary stay. His arrest led to a seemingly non-stop assault from the District of Corruption to hasten the extradition order to the U.S. so the man can face hacking charges.

I am no fan of Assange nor am I an opponent, but the lopsided assault on the man gave me pause to consider some ethical details.

The most egregious charge against Assange was "he hacked into our government computer system and stole information." This 'information' put American lives and American informants' lives at risk but what it also showed is the U.S. government definitely engaged in activities that, for any other country or person on the planet, it itself would classify as "illegal" and prosecute them for to the full extent of the law.  Fair for the goose should be fair for the gander.

There are a couple of legal questions that the District of Corruption has deftly avoided simply because nobody in the free press has had the guts to ask them.

Assange, whether you agree with his politics or not, seems to have disrupted a government penchant for putting and trusting anything and everything on computers--including top secret items. Those in government have effectively forfeited their right to "secrecy" if they put that information on a worldwide web of communication in order to share that information. If you wanted some legally questionable activity to remain anonymous, you shouldn't trust it to the safekeeping of a system that offers millions of outlets.

There is a more troublesome aspect of the Assange/Wikileaks affair that has been nicely slid under the radar and for which I believe those in the District of Corruption will be answerable for if they try to prosecute for hacking. For the past three years Americans have witnessed a continual assault on the current Administration for nefarious activities in the 2016 election. Few, if any, who supported the Clinton campaign in the same election want to discuss what Assange found out about definitive illegal campaign activities by their darling.

On the day of the election, Nov. 8, 2016, Assange released a report on the 2016 election cycle. It began, "In recent months, Wikileaks and I personally have come under enormous pressure to stop publishing what the Clinton campaign says about itself to itself. That pressure has come from the campaign's allies, including the Obama Administration [probably including all the intelligence agencies] and from liberals who are anxious about who will be elected U.S. President." 

He continued, "The right to receive and impart true information [emphasis mine] is the guiding principle of Wikileaks...Our organization defends the public's right to be informed."

Oh! the horrors that could be unleashed for the District of Corruption if the American public was to know the true facts about things that have been happening with regularity in domestic and foreign arenas because of our incompetent political leaders.

Hacking may or may not have been part of what enabled Assange to release information DC wanted kept quiet. But in some cases--like Chelsea, nee Bradley, Manning's own hacking efforts that Assange exploited where's the crime when Manning committed the act and was pardoned?

Assange, by DC standards, is guilty of the same thing the Trump campaign was guilty of--collusion with Russia. But there is a difficult aspect to the charges that, if DC has proof, is not likely to see the light of day simply because of the convoluted manner in which DC has classified that information. How will the prosecution prove Assange hacked into its system without demonstrating--publicly without a chance at protecting secrecy--that Assange hacked its system? Simply being in possession of such information is not proof of guilt.

If passing along information gained from outside sources without the passer committing an illegal act is now defined as criminal we can kiss the First Amendment, if not all the Constitution, good-bye. If that is the case, that's where the true colors of the District of Corruption will be shown. The single charge made public thus far is that Assange "conspired with with Manning to crack a password on a DoD computer" in 2010.

Assange, by most descriptions, is a self-centered man. But aren't we all to some extent? Is he a creep? Probably. Do I like him? Unequivocally, NO. But I have to respect a man who has the courage to put himself in harm's way of any government by releasing information that government wanted kept secret. Assange's release of CIA technical spying documents in March 2017 that showed hi-tech televisions could serve as a government listening device, even when turned off, was damning for our alleged "protectors of the Constitution." 

Added to that fact the DC crowd is upset that Wikileaks published a video of an American airstrike that killed citizens in Iraq along with military information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and Clinton-era State Department messages. But if journalism is going to be defined by pleasing the Swamp, the free has to be removed from our description of the press in the Constitution. 

When that happens, we truly are no better than any banana republic out there and our holier-than-thou government Swamp should be expunged completely just to make sure all the rats are homeless as well.

Our government should be more interested in finding out how to protect its top secret material from moles like Assange. But as American citizens we should be insisting our government cease and desist from engaging in activity(ies) that for anyone else would be considered un-Constitutional. If we do not then our corrupt government will continue to grow.and the only people we can blame is the nimrod in the mirror. 

"I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility towards every form of tyranny over the mind of man."--Thomas Jefferson